


they'll hang us in the louvre

by firebreathing_bitchqueen



Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Cunnilingus, Established Relationship, F/M, Face-Sitting, Fluff, Love Confessions, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:26:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28599168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firebreathing_bitchqueen/pseuds/firebreathing_bitchqueen
Summary: a collection of prompt-based one-shots, written for Nate and Holland.
Relationships: Female Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell
Comments: 10
Kudos: 35





	1. all the fear and the fire of the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

> Most/all of these can also be found on [ tumblr](https://www.nates-gilded-pen.tumblr.com), if you're so inclined. 
> 
> Rating for each chapter will be all over the place, but I'll try to note the chapter rating at the beginning of them all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter rating: T  
> chapter prompt: things you said when you were scared

Everything is fine. Better than fine, actually: everything is almost perfect (and isn’t _that_ inherently disgusting, she thinks, her nose wrinkling instinctively as soon as the thought pops up). Lately, Holland’s life — or significant parts of it, anyway — had begun to feel rather like she lived in some kind of dreamy bubble, all shiny, iridescent pink. And _soft_ , like wrapping her whole body in a feather-down comforter straight out of the dryer, a voluminous cocoon against winter evenings. Cold, rainy nights made more bearable in the soft press of sweet-smelling cotton against her skin. In winter, the knowledge that she has such a comforter is usually the only thing that makes the grey, post-holiday dead of winter almost bearable, really: sanity held fast just with the knowledge she could spend entire evenings bundled into a giant lump of fluffy fabric on her sofa while she read, drank peppermint hot chocolate (well, peppermint mocha lattes, anyway), and judged _Jeopardy_ contestants for not knowing the exact questions she knew. The kind of feeling that’s so cozy and inviting, it’s nigh impossible to resist the temptation to dive straight in, fast and deep.

And, really, that’s the crux of the whole thing: she’s comfortable, and she’s _happy_ , and it’s making her edgy as hell.

Every time she saw Nate she felt like she was wrapping herself in that dreamy, down-comforter feeling. Every time she touched him (which seemed to be all the time, every time she was near him she ended up touching him, tucking her feet under his thighs on the couch, leaning against him, bumping up against him as if he were actually, truly magnetized). If she’s honest with herself (which she avoids whenever possible, on general principle), she feels it every time she _thinks_ about him.

Trouble. With a capital fucking _T._

Objectively, she knows that the first flushes of attraction often feel this way, and they never last. The deeper ones, hopefully, but none of the nervous edges, the fizzing in your veins, at least not this unsettlingly. Those gold-rush, free-fall, carbonated-bloodstream feeling that throw everything off track, tilt your axis and leave you spinning, delirious, giddy. They never last. There are studies on it. Lots and lots of studies. It’s all just brain chemicals. Eventually, your body will calm down and re-establish an equilibrium.

And thank the gods, because that much fizzing in her body is the (best)worst feeling. New relationships always feel a bit like getting the bends. And that tumbling, free-fall rush might feel like soaring at first, but people aren’t built for flying without special equipment. People in a free-fall rush always, inevitably end up defeated by gravity. Without a parachute, that terminal-velocity feeling only ever results in a bone-crushing crash.

And although she’s dated plenty of people, thought she’d maybe even loved some (or come close, or whatever: it’s not like there are precise instruments to measure the validity of a person deciding they love another person), she’s never felt like this. She’s felt excited, of course, in the way all new relationships are exciting, if only because they’re new and our brains are wired to be drawn to new things. In a lot of ways, she thinks, humans are a lot like flightless, overgrown crows. Or magpies. We see new and shiny, our most primitive synapses light up like a Christmas tree.

But if a normal new relationship felt like a Christmas tree, Holland is pretty sure _hers_ is currently playing host to the giant one in Times Square. And probably a couple of other major metropolitan abominations.

She’d figured it out a little over a week ago. The source of all of _this_ , all of these unruly, unsettling, immeasurable _feelings._

_And you would’ve known sooner if you’d bothered to listen to me_ , Tina had said, when after the first two days of debating with herself, she’d called her in a panic one evening and blurted out, “I have a giant fucking problem.”

Tina, who had been watching Holland fret through most of her past two work days, was not overly concerned. She was pretty sure she knew the “problem” to which Holland referred was (while probably giant by her tiny friend’s standards) was a person — or at least feelings caused by a person — and was the opposite of a problem.

“A problem,” she had repeated levelly, shifting her phone to rest between her jaw and shoulder and resuming painting her toenails a bright holographic fuchsia.

“Tina. I’m serious.”

“Okay,” she twisted, trying to reach her littlest toe. “So let’s figure it out. What’s the problem?”

Holland took a deep breath. “I think I might be in love with Nate,” she said solemnly, sounding for all the world that she’d just announced she had two weeks to live.

It took every last shred of Tina’s willpower not to laugh out loud. Not _at_ Holland, of course. It was just that it was such a perfectly Holland thing to do: feel something new and serious, overthink it to death, and then panic when that feeling didn't respond to rational discourse. She clenched her jaw and what felt like every single muscle in her body until she felt able to breathe without exhaling so much as a giggle. Ruining her pedicure in the process, she noted ruefully, surveying the fresh fuchsia streak smeared between two toes and the top of her foot, her hand shaking with the effort of not laughing.

“Holland,” she said evenly, giving up for the moment on the nod to Jackson Pollock she’d created on her foot. “I love you, and I’m not diminishing your obvious anxiety here. But you do _not_ have a problem. Not a giant problem, and almost certainly not a fucking problem,” she couldn’t tamp down the grin at this last statement, and she could almost _hear_ the force of Holland’s scowl on the other end.

“We’ve been dating like, maybe three months. I cannot be in love with him. That’s not a thing. That’s what a crazy person says. It’s too early! I sound like one of those emotionally stunted people who are so starved for affection that they make eye contact with someone and start naming their future children.”

“Oh, are we naming your future kids? Name one after me! Just like, don't make a godparent because you really don't want me raising your kid if you die."

The sound from the other end was a truly unfortunate blend of heavy sigh and animalistic snarl. This time, Tina couldn't contain the laugh that bubbled out of her. "I don’t think you get to project-manage your love life. The heart wants what it wants.”

“The heart only wants steady unobstructed blood flow!”

“It’s a euphemism. As you know.”

“Tinaaaa,” she dragged her name out in something that sounded dangerously close to a whine.

“Holls. Your problem is you’re scared. Being in love is never a problem. Well,” she amended, “I guess it is if you’re, like, one of those people who tries to marry imprisoned serial killers. But that is not this. This is a totally normal, expected turn of events in a relationship with someone you are clearly into. And,” she cut off Holland’s noise of dissent. “Someone who is even more clearly into _you_.”

She’d been fretting ever since.

“Holland?”

Nate’s voice snaps her out of her reverie.

“Huh?”

Very intelligent and smooth, she thinks. Exactly the kind of purred quip famously known to win hearts and curry favor.

She doesn’t care what Tina said. This is a huge fucking problem and, judging by the effect it appears to have on her nervous system, possibly might give her an aneurysm. True, she'd never heard of anything like that happening before, but that didn't preclude it from being within the realm of possibility. She could literally be dying, for all she knew.

“You’ve been staring at that for the past ten minutes without moving,” he gestures to the pile of embroidery floss in her lap, the barely begun cross-stitch project underneath the selection of colors.

She blinks, first at her lap, then at him, arching a brow. “Which I suppose means you haven’t exactly spent the past ten minutes reading, either.”

He smiles at her, open and warm, closing the book in his hands and setting it gently to the side.

“Fair point,” he concedes, still smiling at her. “So, what’s got you so driven to distraction? You looked like you were deep in thought.”

_You,_ she thinks. _You_ have driven me to distraction, and I am not equipped for terminal velocity.

And, damn him, he’s still looking at her, still smiling softly, if a bit more quizzically at her. He is so lovely when he smiles, she thinks, yet again failing to quell the thrumming buzz of nervous energy in her veins, the clenching in her chest. She swallows against the protesting friction of her too-dry mouth, feeling sand in her throat. Fuck. _Fuck_. She is in such deep, unrelenting shit.

Probably because you look like you’ve just had a stroke, she thought, a shimmer of frustration adding to the buzzing in her whole body. 

She straightens a bit, then, pulling back to rest her lower back against the arm of the couch they’re on, pulling her feet from where they’d been nestled between the soft warmth of cushion and Nate’s leg, tucking crossed ankles underneath herself. Inhales, partially to check that she can still take a full breath. Lets it out. Lets her eyes meet his, forces herself to make a decision.

“Nate,” she begins, then pauses, an almost-falter flickering in her throat.

“Holland,” he says, ghost of a smile still at the corners of his mouth, but he’s more serious now as he watches her, as he waits for her to say more.

Well, she thinks. If I’m already falling, I may as well enjoy the flight before the bone-crush of ground.

“I’m in love with you,” she says, forcing herself to maintain eye contact, to not shy away from the bald vulnerability of the admission.

And she’s glad for this, too, because the smile that takes over his whole face is the loveliest thing she’s ever seen.


	2. what i've tasted of desire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I have drunken deep of joy,  
> And I will taste no other wine tonight.”   
> \- Percy Bysshe Shelley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter rating: E   
> chapter prompt: "for one muse to sit on the other one's face"

“Let me taste you,” he murmured, and his voice was honey, a wine-dark sea, deep and smooth, quiet words so sweet she’d swear she tasted them on her lips.

She’d given an eager, assenting hum, twisted to unhook her knee from his hip, to roll off of him and onto her back, when he stopped her, pulled her back to him.

“Not quite like that, though,” Nate breathed, slid his hands slow slow slow down her thighs, dragged them back up to grip her hips. Gave her a smile that was so seductive, so _hungry_ that her breath actually caught, a fluttering clench in her throat that mirrored the one low in her belly.

Holland tipped forward to press once more against his chest, driven by that instinctive draw to press bare skin against bare skin, to feel his heartbeat against her own. He tugged gently, meaningfully on her hips as she skated the tip of her nose along his throat, his jawline, and brought her mouth back to his. Just as she brushed her lips against his, he tilted his head forward and rested his forehead against hers, both brown and green eyes catching what remained of the dwindling daylight outside and reflecting the golden glow back at the other.

His eyes were still on hers, his voice low and seductive, breath sweet and warm on her face, when he whispered, “I want you to ride my mouth.”

She had almost protested. Not the act entire — she wasn’t sure she would ever, _could_ ever resist the pull of those eyes on hers, dark with wanting, never leaving hers except when they dragged down her body almost as slowly as his hands and mouth did when they followed. But this…

Immediate concerns sprang to mind, almost-anxieties that, she thought, were probably typical.

_It might be awkward_ _…_

_That seems like an inadvisable amount of weight concentrated in one area_ _…_

_Doesn_ _’t that make breathing difficult...?_

_Although_ …

No matter how common her immediate hesitations, the quick realization that followed — specifically, how totally inapplicable most (if not all) of them were in this particular situation — was undoubtedly _sui generis_.

“Let me see you, feel you,” more honey on her tongue, more crackling strands of fire in her veins, “let me hear what divine sounds I can draw from you, fill my senses with you while you move above me.” Each sentence was punctuated with slow, heady kisses, kisses that took and took and _took_ , drawing everything solid out of her but — _oh_ — what a dreamy, floaty weightlessness they left in their wake, Holland’s body warm and loose-limbed and _alive,_ every nerve ending sparking under his touch.

_There were probably a lot of positions that became much easier when your partner didn_ _’t need to breathe. And could probably support your body weight many, many times over for some time._

_That would make it less likely to be awkward_ , she thought.

And still he continued, slowly, deliberately stoking that fire, those flames that licked at her, that blazed in the darkest parts of her, that sparked under his touch, smoldered there until she burst into flames in his arms.

_Not like it could be less potentially awkward than wrapping her naked body like a gift in the middle of the library_ _…_

She grinned against his mouth at the memory of his birthday, a half-breath of a laugh extinguished against his lips before it had fully passed hers as he continued, with his hands and his mouth and his quiet words, to coax that wildfire into catching, igniting.

“I want to watch you take your pleasure, to hold you steady when you come undone on my mouth,” he purred against her skin, and Holland felt her brain short-circuit.

She deepened the kiss, sucking his bottom lip into her mouth, flicked her tongue against it, and felt the hand on her hip tighten. Rolled her hips against his in response, felt a strangely intoxicating thrill of power when he moaned against her mouth. At the sheer pleasure of the sounds she could draw out of him, of knowing that she could elicit such a response from him. That she had the capacity to command the attention of such a sublime creature as he. The thrill of knowing that he wanted her as deeply and consumingly as she wanted him. 

And, _gods_ , did she want him. Always, but more now, with the slide of his tongue over hers, the warm expanse of bare skin beneath her on the bed, the heady, rich scent of him.

_I could get drunk on the scent of him alone_ , she thought, _the close warmth of it, of_ him _, more potent than any opium._

She pulled away from his mouth, pressing lingering kisses along his jaw before burying her face against his neck, just under his earlobe, where his skin was something extra, extra-soft, extra-warm. She stretched forward to press her lips against the shell of his ear, always stretching to reach more of him, even when she’s sprawled across him, forever reaching for more places to kiss, to touch along what seemed to be miles of gold-dust tawny skin. Took a deep breath, then immediately let it out, a surprised giggle at the tickle of his hair, longer now, against her nose. Felt more than heard the rumble of his own laugh against her skin as he turned his head to recapture her mouth, one hand moving from the curve of her waist to drift up her back. His fingers were whisper-soft along her skin, wending a path both tortuous and torturous with teasing detours along her sides, hand splayed along her ribs before brushing up to cup the side of her breast, thumb slipping between their chests to drag across her nipple. Her hips rocked into his again and she shivered at his moan, restrained but full of need, felt the echo of it against her mouth, the less restrained but no less needy press of him against her, the scorching heat of him through layers of fabric, scant and impossibly thick at once, the smooth silk of his pajama bottoms and soft lace of her underwear the last barriers between them.

“Please,” she breathed against his mouth, arching into his touch and rolling her hips against his again, felt how hard and warm he was beneath her. One of them moaned, or maybe it had been both.

Nate slid his thumbs beneath the dark lace of her waistband, stroking her bare hipbones before gently easing her panties down. She rose onto her knees, hands pressed lightly against the planes of his stomach for balance before rolling to one side to work them the rest of the way off. As soon as she unhooked her last foot, he pulled her forward again, hands sliding lazily back down her body, gripping her ass, and tugging her forward. She moved to bracket her knees on either side of his shoulders, hands pressed into the soft sheets on either side of his head as she leaned down to kiss the tip of his nose before lifting again, her fingers curling around the wrought iron bars of her headboard, his hands on her thighs, steadying her, before moving up to hold her hips, tugging her gently forward and down, to lower onto his face. She shifted, tried to balance her weight above him rather than fully on him. But he was having none of that: she felt the firm warmth of his hands on her hips, smoothing along the curve of her backside to pull her closer, hold her flush against his mouth as he began to lay gentle siege to her senses.

She moaned at the first slow, featherlight glide of his tongue against her, the slow climb of gentle teasing flicks against her most sensitive skin, a series of careful, seductive light kisses that circled and pulled at her sanity but ( _damn him_ ) never lingered long enough where she wanted, where she _needed_ them most. Gentle and slow, the soft press of his lips, his tongue teasingly, frustratingly soft. And _thorough_ : still holding her close, his movements painstaking as he dragged the flat of his tongue up, a slow climb that left her aching. She felt him press somehow closer, tilt his head to dip where she was slick with need, drinking her in like a priceless wine. As if her body were ambrosia, offering sweet traces of that nectar of the gods.

And then he was arcing up again, still holding her close, keeping her steady with one large, warm hand, the other sweeping up, first to leave a pebbled trail of goosebumps up her spine as he danced his fingers along the ridge of her scapula, a sweet press against the building tension in her shoulders, a pale imitation of the simmering swell happening lower. She felt the pads of her fingers grip the cool iron of the bed frame, heard her own gasping whimper as he moved his hand from her shoulder to cup her breast, the slow circling of his thumb on its peak, the gentle tug of his fingers mirroring the slick, circling press of his tongue on her clit, then his lips as he sucked. Head tipped back, she arched into his touch, hips grinding into his mouth, breast flattening into the warmth of his hand. Felt him moan against her, felt the susurrous hum of it vibrate against her. Moved one hand from its curled grip on the headboard to rest against his cheek, fingers tangled in the soft curl of his hair as the deep, lovely ache of pleasure swelled within her.

She had a brief, wild thought, remembrance of an old Czech phrase she’d learned, once upon a time, now come to her brain unbidden.

_P_ _řinesl bych modré z nebe,_ she thought, and she might have slurred it aloud — around a moan, around his name — because she could have sworn she felt his lips curl against her even as his tongue continued to press poetry into her skin.

But then she had no thoughts, only the bursting crash of sensation, of pleasure, of — _oh_ — of _everything,_ her senses filled with the pierian sweetness of him as he held her through it, steadying her through wave after wave of that explosive bliss, a muffled groan against her as she writhed against him, cried out in answer to his moan.

\-- 

Later,

_(much later, late enough that she_ _’d stopped caring if her sleepy, crumpled sprawl against him looked more melted ice cream cone than sated_ objet de désir)

she'd felt him press a kiss against her hair and leaned into it like a cat; felt his lips curve against her ear as he whispered, “I didn’t know you spoke Czech.”

She smiled briefly — so he _had_ heard her earlier — turned onto her side so they were nose-to-nose on his pillow. Arched a brow. “I didn’t know _you_ spoke Czech.”

His smile widened, the brief glint of teeth reflecting in the lamplight as he nuzzled his nose against hers. “ _Jste prost_ _ě plní překvapení, že?”_

She gave a little hum of tired amusement, pressed a kiss on the side of his mouth before nestling into the curve of his neck, face against his shoulder. As her eyes drifted closed, she mumbled around a yawn, “ _Nem_ _áš ponětí._ ”

And just before she let her body sink into sleeping, Holland thought — was almost _sure_ — she heard Nate murmur, “ _Zbo_ _žňuji tě, láska.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Czech translations**:  
> "Přinesl bych modré z nebe" = "I would bring you the blue from the sky"  
> "Jste prostě plní překvapení, že?” = "You're just full of surprises aren't you?"  
> “Nemáš ponětí.” = "You have no idea."  
> “Zbožňuji tě, láska.” = "I adore you, love."
> 
> **If you notice anything incorrect or odd about them, please let me know! Unlike Holland and Nate, I do *not* speak Czech, and while I did a lot of research on appropriate terms/grammar, it's totally possible I made a mistake. (Seriously, the only words I know in Czech are my own name, the relevant metro stops from my visit to Prague, and the name of a brewery.)


End file.
